Subjectivity and Causality in discourse and cognition

Sanders, Ted; Evers-Vermeul, Jacqueline

doi:10.1075/pbns.305.10san

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…The distinction between subjective and objective causality in human cognition is substantiated by evidence from language development and processing (see [13] for a detailed review). For example, research on child language acquisition has shown that the acquisition of these two types of causality takes place at different ages, with objective causality being acquired earlier than subjective causality [14,15].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of prosody in interpreting causality in English discourse

Hu,

Chen,

Quené

et al. 2023

PLoS ONE

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Previous studies have well established that certain causal connectives encode information about the semantic-pragmatic distinction between different types of causal relations such as CAUSE-CONSEQUENCE versus CLAIM-ARGUMENT relations. These “specialized” causal connectives assist listeners in discerning different types of causality. Additionally, research has demonstrated that utterances expressing CLAIM-ARGUMENT relations exhibit distinct prosodic characteristics compared to utterances expressing CAUSE-CONSEQUENCE relations. However, it remains unknown whether the prosodic characteristics of utterances expressing causality can aid listeners in determining the specific type of causality being conveyed. To address this knowledge gap, this study investigates the impact of the prosody, specifically the prosody of the causal connective so in English, on listeners’ interpretation of the type of causality expressed. We conducted a perception experiment employing a forced-choice discourse completion task, where the participants were required to select a continuation for each sound clip they heard. The sound clip consisted of factual events followed by the causal connective so. We found that the odds of listeners choosing subjective continuations over objective continuations increased when the connective so at the end of the sound clip was pronounced with subjective causality prosodic features, such as prolonged duration and a concave f0 contour. This finding suggests that the prosody of the connective so plays a role in conveying subjectivity in causality, guiding listeners in interpreting causal relations. In addition, it is important to note that our data revealed individual variation among listeners in their interpretations of prosodic information related to subjective-objective causality contrast.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of prosody in interpreting causality in English discourse

Hu,

Chen,

Quené

et al. 2023

PLoS ONE

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L’expression De La Causalité en Latin Et Dans Les Langues Romanes : Matrices Formelles Et Gradation Intensionnelle

Popescu¹

2022

Studia UBB Philologia

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"The Expression of Causality in Latin and in Romance Languages: Formal Frames and Intentional Gradation. This approach proposes a reflection on the expression of “causality” in Latin and in Romance languages. First, we will study the ontology and the multiple nature of the notion of “causality”, as well as the formal matrices of the realization of the causal link between two propositions, between two sentences or between two communication situations. We will then take into consideration the relationship between “causality” and “subjectivity” and we will exemplify this relationship by reviewing some causal connectors with an argumentative and/or metadiscursive function. At this point, we will also review the syntactic and semantic functioning of the explicative causal constructions introduced by the prototypical connectors: Lat. NAM, Fr. car and Rom. căci, in order to indicate the similarities and especially the differences in the behaviour of these lexical and grammatical units. Keywords: causality relation, subjectivity, causality markers, cohesion, coherence, Latin and Romance languages "

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